Green Home Features Passive Cooling & Automation
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 09.26.06
Jetson Green writes about this green home designed by the architectural firm LPA (for the president of the company), and it was recently featured in Architectural Record. Three sides of the house wrap around a courtyard/pool-area. The pocket glass and screen doors open up to the solar-heated pool area (Suntrek). The entire house was designed for efficient natural lighting, including a mostly windowless eastern orientation, an extended roof overhang on the southwestern side, an insulated, translucent skylight in the main room (Kalwall Skylight), and mechanical sunshades in every room (Lutron).
The house is powered almost completely by the 5.3 KW building integrated photovoltaics (Solar Integrated Technologies). Also, the carpet tiles (Interface FLOR) and floor (Terrazzo) are both made with recycled content. Of course, the paint is non-VOC, Eco-shield paint (Dunn Edwards).
An interesting example of a luxurious home with plenty of green attributes.
:: Jetson Green
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Whoa, I've been treehugger'd. This is really a pretty cool house...it has some design features that we can look at and apply in other contexts. Thanks for the post.
The ghost of Frank Lloyed Wright is back in play!
Nice! Almost makes me wish I didn't live in the city...
wow. beautiful house & smart use of green technology. I only hope they use gray water to feed that lush lawn of theirs.
I want to see more about this place...knock knock.
Wait, this is killing me. I can't take it any more.
This is a 4,500 SF house for THREE people. It has a four car garage. Yeah it has publicly subsidized PV on the roof, but this house is a pig. A pretty pig, but a pig nonetheless.
http://architecturalrecord.com/projects/residential/archives/0609HotM-1.asp
Key quote: "This house was an opportunity for me to practice what I preach,” Heinfeld says of the 4,500-square-foot home he designed for himself, his wife, and their teenage daughter. “It’s hard to sell green if I don’t live it."
I'm an architect myself, and I can't take this crushing wave of monster houses with a thin veneer of bamboo flooring getting passed off as "sustainable". It's not. No matter how you slice it, 4,500 SF to house 3 people is not a sustainable way of living on this planet.
Aargh. This is not a new argument, I know, but this type of house doesn't need any more publicity.